Malik
02-02-2022, 10:40 PM
He has kept to the same bit of forested peninsula for many weeks now, walking the coast of it often enough that he recognizes the bent spruce that grows beside a cracked red boulder, and slows his ambling walk just after he comes into sight of the narrow bridge of land that connects the western realm to the rest of the mainland.
Malik takes in a deep breath, one scented with summer and sea salt, and sighs.
Somewhere on the other side of the bridge is the thing that killed his father and wears his body. Will this be the day he confronts it, he asks himself? At first he had thought he’d be ready by the spring equinox, but now summer has begun to ripen the thick river grasses from green to gold and he still is not yet sure.
Malik found an easy rhymtym to this way of life. He wakes when he wants to and does anything he pleases all day, which is mostly wander through the same small bit of common lands and fret about what waits across the water. Malik does not understand what had happened that night in the mountains, but the scar at his neck still wakes him. Not as often as before he’d left Hyaline, and never with agony that lasts long into waking. But enough to keep it fresh, enough that he shakes his dark head fretfully, and looks north again toward the high peaks of Hyaline.
It will eventually return there, Malik knows, and if he delays too long he might miss this opportunity. If this lull is even an opportunity, and not just him deluding himself. The possibility of that occurs to him nearly as often as the fact that he has no idea what he will even do if he finds it. What he can do, even.
He can’t keep waiting, and yet he remains still, and turns one black ear back at the sound of unexpected birdsong.
Ahead of him, the morning sun touches the top of the nearest butte, turning it from shadowy brown shape to a brilliant orange-red. More of the butte turns red as the sun rises higher, and when it reaches the midpoint and Malik finds himself still there, locked in indecision, he scoffs and turns away and begins to amble toward the mouth of the River.
Not today, he thinks.
Perhaps tomorrow.
Ooc: just something to explain what he has been up to and an excuse to ramble
Malik takes in a deep breath, one scented with summer and sea salt, and sighs.
Somewhere on the other side of the bridge is the thing that killed his father and wears his body. Will this be the day he confronts it, he asks himself? At first he had thought he’d be ready by the spring equinox, but now summer has begun to ripen the thick river grasses from green to gold and he still is not yet sure.
Malik found an easy rhymtym to this way of life. He wakes when he wants to and does anything he pleases all day, which is mostly wander through the same small bit of common lands and fret about what waits across the water. Malik does not understand what had happened that night in the mountains, but the scar at his neck still wakes him. Not as often as before he’d left Hyaline, and never with agony that lasts long into waking. But enough to keep it fresh, enough that he shakes his dark head fretfully, and looks north again toward the high peaks of Hyaline.
It will eventually return there, Malik knows, and if he delays too long he might miss this opportunity. If this lull is even an opportunity, and not just him deluding himself. The possibility of that occurs to him nearly as often as the fact that he has no idea what he will even do if he finds it. What he can do, even.
He can’t keep waiting, and yet he remains still, and turns one black ear back at the sound of unexpected birdsong.
Ahead of him, the morning sun touches the top of the nearest butte, turning it from shadowy brown shape to a brilliant orange-red. More of the butte turns red as the sun rises higher, and when it reaches the midpoint and Malik finds himself still there, locked in indecision, he scoffs and turns away and begins to amble toward the mouth of the River.
Not today, he thinks.
Perhaps tomorrow.
Ooc: just something to explain what he has been up to and an excuse to ramble